Re: polybuffer~ public beta
I've been working on a similar project, and I needed to dynamically create mixer/effects channels for each new sample coming in through a filewatch, and keep track of buffers that had been cleared. The way I did it was to use a simple array of flags inside the object that kept track of which buffers were un/available. Since my custom object is doing the buffer-clearing in the first place, it knows the state of each one. So every time a new sample comes in through my filewatch, my object iterates through the array of flags until it finds an available buffer. This lets you set the total number of buffers through an argument (much like poly~), but lets you recycle old buffers as you clear them and re-use them for new, incoming samples.
Here's a snapshot of my method that fires when a new sample comes in. It finds an available buffer inside an associated poly~ (which is housing my "fileloader" patches, which are basically buffer~/groove~ pairs), and targets the correct voice to send in either a clear command or a filepath to put new data in a buffer.